Because of the rapid development of computer technology, the multimedia playing system made with the integration of a computer system and an audiovisual player is gaining popularity and is widely used on many occasions, including offices and households. Similarly, computers integrated with intelligent appliances (IA) are also widely available in the product market.
Conventional multimedia playing system is basically interfacing a computer system with an audiovisual player. Thus, the user usually needs to boot the computer system up in order to activate and operate the audiovisual player. In other words, the user must wait until the computer system completes the BIOS program initialization, POST program, peripheral detection and driving, OS activation, system state setting, and so on, before the user can execute the audiovisual program to play the audiovisual data. It is inconvenient for the user as there is no shortcut to bypass the tedious booting process of the computer system.
The aforementioned drawback deters the computer-based multimedia system from behaving like a household appliance with a quick activation/booting process. If the computer-based multimedia system allows the user to switch among various function options like a household appliance, the ease of use will be a value-added feature to the computer.
As the computer provides many functions and yet most computer users usually use one or few computer functions at a time, such as music listening, TV watching, movie watching, it is a waste of time for the user to wait for the computer system to execute the initialization of all the hardware before they can use the intended function.